The big day is tomorrow, when millions will gather around televisions to cheer their team, boo the opposition and watch ridiculously fun commercials. Oh, and eat.
Super Bowl Sunday is as much about indulging in food as it is indulging in some serious TV time. While chips, dips, guacamole and wings usually rule the day, here are some other easy, last-minute ideas to get your party started.
Eat up and enjoy!
Bean-based soups are amazing for their nutritional value and the sheer comfort they provide, not to mention that they cost so little to make. The problem with making most legume soups from scratch is the amount of time it takes to soak the beans – usually overnight – and then cook them, which can take hours more. If you don’t do it properly, instead of a soft bean, you’ll risk biting into something as hard as a rock.
Split pea soup doesn’t have these issues. Like lentils, the beauty of split peas is that they cook quickly – about 45 minutes – and require no soaking beforehand. Yet they pack plenty of fiber and protein, and about zero fat. Add the soup’s earthy taste and warm-your-belly satisfaction, and split pea is a winner. It’s also very cost-effective and can be tailored to a variety of tastes. You can buy a 1-pound bag of dried split peas in just about any grocery store for around $2 or less. The soup can be made vegetarian style or, for even more flavor, can include crisp, rendered bacon bits or a traditional ham hock.
While water can be used as the base liquid, I prefer broth or stock since it adds flavor. You can use chicken, vegetable, even turkey or beef broth, or a combination thereof.
I like to mix low-sodium chicken broth and vegetable broth for mine. Furthermore, I bolster my split pea with potatoes, carrots and onions and garlic. The result is a big pot of soup that can feed an army.
If making homemade soup has daunted you all these years, start with split pea, and start right here.
It’s the new year, that time when we make resolutions, ponder life’s big questions and wonder how that last year flew by so quickly. Oftentimes the first of these involves diets, and with them, vows to eat better.
Before you roll your eyes, don’t worry: This isn’t necessarily an article about nutrition or how to shed calories. Rather, it’s suggestions on five foods to try that may be new to you – all of which do happen to boost flavor in a relatively healthful way.
These foods are not usually eaten alone, and that’s the beauty of them: They can make a dish that’s tried and true better, and can be used in lieu of ingredients that are higher in fat and/or calories. They can introduce flavors you may not be familiar with, and are all ripe for experimentation.
Here are the five foods that top my recommended list of ones to try in the new year. I hope those that are new to you will find their way into your kitchen in 2012.
I love herbs. Fresh or dried, they are an instant way to boost flavor without adding fat or salt. Their varieties and flavors baffle the mind, and they can perk up dishes ranging from the simplest eggs to the finest steak to ice cream and hundreds of foods in between.
One of my favorite herb combinations is one I only recently discovered. It was love at first taste, and now I use it on everything from seafood to spaghetti: herbes de Provence, named after the southern region in France.
These herbs, sometimes labeled “herbs from Provence,” are dried and can be found bagged or bottled with others in supermarkets or even stores like Target. Herbes de Provence are a blend of herbs, but like so many other creations in cooking, the combination creates a culinary synergy that’s magic in your mouth.
Herbes de Provence generally are a mix of dried thyme, basil, marjoram, savory and fennel. Some blends contain additional herbs such as lavender, rosemary and parsley. Bottles cost anywhere from a few dollars for a house brand like Target’s Archer Farms (it’s quite good) to nearly $20 for “gourmet” versions found at specialty retailers and online.
It’s true: Some foods have a near-global appeal. No matter where you’re from or what your food preferences are, they speak the universal language of delicious.
Oftentimes these culinary all-stars are rather simple, and shine not just because they taste good, but because they have other inherently likable characteristics as well, such as an agreeable texture and ease of handling. One such food that immediately comes to my mind is the biscuit.
These simple, puffy clouds of carbohydrate goodness have a seemingly magical quality about them. Through the centuries they have been found everywhere from the sacks of traveling peasants to gilded baskets atop linen tablecloths.
They can be savory or sweet, and only get better when teamed with condiments such as butter, honey or gravy. Biscuits are also special in that they can be had for breakfast, lunch, dinner or a snack; eaten as a side; or, when cut in half, used for a sandwich.
When I told a colleague that I’d be making some, he asked if I use Bisquick. My eyes immediately shot daggers.
The feast is over, and you are as stuffed as that turkey that’s now stuffed inside you. Now it’s off to a comatose state in front of the TV or, if you are one of those insane ones, off to bed so you can be up in a few hours for the Black Friday pandemonium. Oh, and then there’s that carcass, the culinary wreckage of a feast that only comes once a year.
Most people will just toss those bones and any scraps of meat left on them in the trash without a second thought. But did you know that you can actually resurrect them, giving new life to what is otherwise considered waste? Bones, believe it or not, are a crucial component to classical cooking. After they’ve been picked to, well you know, bones can be simmered in water to make stock. Stock, of course, is the base liquid for myriad other dishes in the culinary world, most often soups and sauces.
In fact, according to The Culinary Institute of America’s “The Professional Chef,” stocks “are referred to in French as fonds de cuisine, or the foundations of cooking.”
Here it is upon us once again and all too soon: Thanksgiving.
You know what that means? Well of course it signals several helpings of turkey and a tryptophan-induced coma in front of the television soon after. It also means that those other holidays — Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and Chrismukkah — are just a blink away.
As things in the kitchen move into high gear, it’s good to slow down and remember to enjoy the process. If you can think of what you are doing as an expression of love instead of a load of work, it will make the day that much more enjoyable.
It’s also a good time to remind about basic kitchen safety of the fowl variety. Undercooked turkey, as we all know, does not make for good eats or safe eats. Here are some tips and facts to remember if you are cooking the bird yourself in the oven:
If you’re not making the main event, remember there are plenty of other sides you can put together quickly and easily. The host will love you for it, too. Here are links to some on this site, with step-by-step photos on how to make them:
Remember to relish the day and don’t stress about the food. In the end, the most important thing at the table are the friends and family gathered.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Confession: Much of my high school senior year was spent at the beach. During class hours. Yes, while I should have been absorbing formal education, I and a group of friends were instead absorbing sun, sand and most of all the ocean. We never skipped the whole day – just some selected classes we decided we’d rather not attend, or perhaps we were just dealing with teen angst the best way we knew how.
Our thinking was that nature’s saline solution that we knew as the Pacific could cure all life’s ills. And magically, somehow that saltwater did indeed make us feel better every time we took a dip.
Turns out, at least from a culinary standpoint, we were on to something. Saltwater really is magical stuff. While each component alone has too many uses to mention in the kitchen – water is used for everything from steaming to making stocks, and salt for everything from preserving to insulating – when used in tandem, they work a magic all their own.
Water mixed with salt is known as a brine, and it’s a classic way of making food flavorful even before the cooking process begins. Brining becomes especially popular this time of year because of Thanksgiving, when the process is used for turkeys.
If you’ve ever had a turkey that’s been brined, you probably already know the results: a bird that is moist and exceptionally flavorful, traits that brines help create. All done ever so simply by submerging food for hours in water and salt (you can experiment with other seasonings, too, from brown sugar to peppercorns).
Yet I sense your hesitation. “What if I get this whole brining thing wrong on the big day? Domino’s may not be able to rescue me if somehow I end up with a waterlogged turkey.”
No worries. Here’s what we’re going to do: practice. And not on a turkey, but something smaller and more manageable: a chicken.
Here it is, the finale of this three-part I Want To Cook miniseries. Three weeks ago we used fat and flour to make a roux, traditionally used to thicken soups, stews and the kind of sauce we made last week, a béchamel. Now we’ll use those foundations to build our latest and last creation: a dynamite cheddar cheese sauce.
With this sauce, the options are limitless. Yes, it’s the magic spread that will get kids and adults alike to eat broccoli. Bring some chips to the party and you have an instant dip. Or you can use it to make the greatest mac and cheese of your life.
The real beauty about this whole endeavor, though, is that you can tailor it to your liking. Not a fan of cheddar? Use Parmesan or another Italian-style cheese to make a mock Alfredo that would be at home over pasta.
Love the idea of fondue but not big on wine? This can be your ticket to dipping bliss. Or perhaps you like it spicy. If that’s the case, throw in some jalapenos and a pinch of cayenne powder: That will wake up those nachos.
With béchamel as a foundation, all this is possible. The sauce is needed for the cheese to incorporate, because, as I unfortunately learned at a very young age, you can’t just throw a bunch of cheese in a pot, turn on the heat and expect it to melt. I think we’re still trying to get the burn remnants off that pan.
For now we’ll make a quick cheddar sauce from our béchamel. I use 4 cups of grated mild cheddar, but again, let your taste and senses be the guide. Use more for a stronger sauce, less for a milder one. This sauce is best used immediately. If you have to reheat, do it gently in a pot or in a microwave, stirring often.
Here’s how to make it happen, including the last two weeks’ instructions for roux and béchamel.
Last week I showed you how to make a roux, which is basically flour cooked in fat, and in doing so we laid the foundation for greater things.
Roux isn’t for eating by itself, of course, but is used to thicken such things as sauces and gravies, which themselves are used in a supporting role to build a main dish.
One easy sauce to build from a roux is béchamel, also known as white sauce. Don’t worry: It tastes better than its rather bland name. In fact, in classical French cooking, this sauce is so important that it’s known as a “mother sauce.” It’s called that because from it even more elaborate sauces can be made.
Béchamel is a thick, milk-based sauce. It gets its thickness from the roux, which also helps give the sauce a nutty, hearty flavor.
Some béchamel recipes call for cooking onions with the roux for added flavor, but you can leave them out if you’re not hot on onions, are short on time, or want a smoother sauce without the need for straining. Other than the roux and the milk, about the only other things this sauce needs are a couple of bay leaves and a dash of nutmeg. And some time, but not a whole lot.
